


Golden Sunlight Through Dark Leaves

by TheWalrusAndTheCarpenter



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Dreams and Nightmares, F/M, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-31
Updated: 2015-08-31
Packaged: 2018-04-18 09:08:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4700276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWalrusAndTheCarpenter/pseuds/TheWalrusAndTheCarpenter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Whenever Lyna Mahariel’s dreams weren’t in the form of darkspawn hordes and archdemons, she dreamt of Tamlen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Golden Sunlight Through Dark Leaves

Whenever Lyna Mahariel’s dreams weren’t in the form of darkspawn hordes and archdemons, she dreamt of Tamlen.

She still blamed herself for her lover’s death, and she probably would continue to do so for many years to come. The hunter might still have been in the ruins when Duncan had convinced her to give up on her search.

Daily she scolded herself.  _Why couldn’t you have tried harder?_ Mahariel kept telling herself.  _He loved you, and you just left him there. He might have been able to have taken the joining too had you searched more for him._

She should have tried harder to convince Tamlen to stop snooping around the creepy ruins in the first place and prevented the entire disaster. Tamlen was as stubborn as a horse at times but had she have kept pleading to return to the keeper he eventually would have caved in and turned back.

Even during her dreams she blamed herself, her subconscious only ever showed her versions of Tamlen that she didn’t want to see like it was punishment for giving up. Most of the versions of Tamlen she had seen in her dreams, or more likely nightmares, were corpses. His body was usually rotten and blackened from where the taint had killed him. Every once in a while her mind would show her a version of Tamlen that had survived, and that was always much worse.

Imagining Tamlen as a ghoul, turned violent and mindless by the taint, caused Mahariel to continuously pray that that wasn’t what had actually happened to him. The hunter’s usually soft lips were turned chapped and red. His skin always looked too tight, too burnt. Small tufts of coarse hair replaced the fluffy locks she was used to running her fingers through as they kissed. He looked nothing like the Tamlen she loved and cared for, and she knew that if he had been turned into such a creature he wouldn’t have been anything like his old self. His mind would have been twisted and corrupted, along with his body, by the corruption.

Since she was so used to being shown scenes of her love dead or in pain, when she finally dreamt of good memories it came as a bit of a shock.

Her dream was fuzzy and mostly unclear, showing only a few details. It was almost as though she was back home where her mind was always flitting between too many thoughts to concentrate on one well enough. Since becoming a Warden her dreams had gotten clearer, whether that was because the darkspawn hordes were so loud or whether it was just because she had so few other thoughts to occupy her mind, she couldn’t tell.

She dreamt of sunlight dappled through the trees, casting patterns on silky tanned skin. The forest they grew up in was large and vibrant, with more shades of green than you could ever imagine. During the hot summers, while she lay next to Tamlen on the forest floor, she would join up the spots of light projected on his chest and arms softly with her finger. It was an innocent act yet intimate at the same time.

She even dreamt of Tamlen’s laughter, deep but calming. It was the same laugh that when Mahariel listened to it, she realised quite how much she loved him. They were always sharing jokes with each other, seeing who could make the other laugh first.

Since the Eluvian, Mahariel had stopped laughing. Tamlen was the only one who had ever been able to bring a smile to the, usually quiet, elf’s face. She missed laughing, but somehow the jokes and stories Alistair and Zevran told while at camp didn’t have the same effect as the cheesy ones Tamlen made up when they were out traipsing around the forest.

Then, she dreamt of his hair. She thought of the flowers she used to try and braid into his too short locks. The way he would sit patiently as she attempted to weave his hair into tiny plaits made her appreciate how much he cared for her. Being an energetic person, Tamlen never was one to stay still. However, having Mahariel attempt to braid his hair and then give up, carding her fingers softly through his locks while pressing soft kisses to the back of his neck made it all worthwhile.

The last thing her dream showed her was Tamlen’s smile, his real one. The smile he used whenever they were alone, the one that was soft and caring. Back at camp Tamlen was always smiling, but it was a cheeky and slightly cocky smile that didn’t seem to come quite so naturally to him as his other one. His smile was one of his best qualities, Mahariel always thought, but she thought had many great qualities.

It was his smile that made her realise that whenever she was with him, she was home. They could have been in the middle of the Anderfels with only a tattered blanket to share between them and that smile would make her feel as though it were the nicest place in all of Thedas. It was that encouraging smile along with his soft, heartfelt words which stopped her giving up when she couldn’t shoot the target while she was learning how to properly use a bow. The same smile which made getting caught sneaking out of camp in the early hours of the morning completely worth it.

That smile was also the same smile that Tamlen shot at her when they first met, the smile that had caused her heart to beat just a little bit faster and had started it all.

Somehow, thinking about good memories was worse than seeing Tamlen dead; it all reminded her of what she could never have again.

As he dreams began to fade, her chest tightened and her eyes began to fill with tears. Gasping for air between ragged breaths, she shot up from her bedroll.

Everyone apart from Sten, who was on watch, was asleep. Sten was too busy staring out into the dark trees surrounding the camp to notice Mahariel waking. Attempting to calm herself, she thanked the Creators that no one was around to see her being a blubbering wreck. It wasn’t a rare thing for her to wake up crying, thanks to the darkspawn blood that was now in her, but it didn’t make it any less embarrassing.

She tried to remember what she saw in her dreams, but she couldn’t. No matter how hard she tried, nothing came back to her.

Although she couldn’t remember anything about it, she assumed the dream must have been bad.

Mahariel was feeling more heartbroken and miserable than she had in a while.

She just wished that Tamlen was with her to hold her and tell her that it was all going to be all right.

**Author's Note:**

> I felt that there needed to be more Mahariel/Tamlen stuff on this site, however I didn't originally intend for this to be a sad thing. Maybe one day I'll learn to write fluffier stuff.
> 
> Unbeta'd and this was written pretty late at night so if you see any mistakes or anything, feel free to point it out so that I can correct it. Thanks.


End file.
